PROPOSED HOTEL THREATENS OUR SAFETY AND OUR ENVIRONMENT

An alarming proposed hotel project threatens Benedict Canyon -- and would create a precedent that would reverberate across the entire Santa Monica Mountains. At this moment, a developer is aggressively petitioning the city to change our residential zoning laws to allow for a hotel.

This proposed hotel and zoning change is the biggest threat to the Santa Monica Mountains in 100 years.

If the city council allows this unprecedented change, it would impact everyone who lives north of Sunset and south of Ventura — from Los Feliz to the Pacific Palisades.

HERE ARE THE FACTS TAKEN FROM THE APPLICATION:

The developer is proposing a 99-room hotel, plus parking for 708 cars, with 80 foot maximum building heights, multiple subterranean parking structures, and over a mile of cement retaining walls right in the middle of our residential neighborhood. Click here to see the exact location.

The proposal includes at least 26 additional detached structures to house 438 guests.

Overall, the project calls for over 782,000 square feet of floor space.

This would involve construction of several new two-lane roads — with access to this commercial establishment from Hutton Drive, Wanda Park Drive and Oak Pass Road,
all of which are narrow, steep and winding substandard streets.

Hauling the earth referred to in the application would require three thousand hauling truck trips rumbling through our streets— before the cement trucks even arrive.

On site alcohol sales are requested for a 5,500 square foot bar, restaurant and banquet facility that will host weddings, fundraisers and other parties for over 700 people.

This requires the likely removal or destruction of hundreds of mature and protected trees.

By the developer’s own admission, the project requires six years of non-stop construction.

The hotel will employ at least 100 staff, the banquet facilities will seat over 700 people. This means truck and passenger car traffic 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

When people who live in homes are trying to sleep, hotels are awake with events, guests arriving and departing and service vehicles and staff coming and going without ceasing.

This hotel would fundamentally change the very nature of Benedict Canyon, clogging our narrow streets with traffic, filling our hills with constant noise, all the while creating precedent for other destructive commercial projects throughout all the canyons.

Our community will not sacrifice everything we treasure about where we live for one individual’s financial gain. If this project is allowed, every developer would look at every open space in that canyons and ask: Could this be the next hotel?

The impact on the environment would be catastrophic. Wildlife would be driven away or die without their natural habitat. Traffic would increase exponentially with a commercial venture in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Pollution and noise would fill the canyon. Home values would be severely impacted by six to ten years of construction. The serene residential character of our community would be forever changed.

Primary access to the property is Wanda Park, a dangerous long narrow uphill winding road. Secondary access equally inaccesible off Oak Pass Road. The developer proposes to build a new concrete access road, knocking down the house at 2534 Hutton Drive and destroying the hillside and open space behind that portion of Hutton Drive.

The Benedict Canyon Community -- and surrounding communities -- strongly objects to this project and the negative impact it will have on the protect greenbelt of the Santa Monica Mountains.

We will not accept a zone change from a residential community to a commercial use. We will not accept transient occupancy in our Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.

We will not submit to decimation of our wildlife corridors and the natural beauty of our Canyon.

Traffic studies have proven our roads to be already overburdened. The proposed project and commercialization of the Benedict Canyon Community is a threat to our public safety.

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST IMMEDIATELY. PLEASE DONATE TO THE COST OF FIGHTING THIS INVASIVE DEVELOPMENT. TAKE ACTION BY SIGNING THE PETITION -- AND WRITING TO LA CITY COUNCILMEMBER PAUL KORETZ TO OPPOSE THIS PROJECT. TELL YOUR NEIGHBORS TO DO THE SAME.

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